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Dayton, OH Downton Church Community Change (a thread)
My roommate and I were wondering about one of our downtown churches and who would have been zoned for that parish. There are only a few existing residences near it. This led us to look online for historic GIS data.
My roommate and I were wondering about one of our downtown churches and who would have been zoned for that parish. There are only a few existing residences near it. This led us to look online for historic GIS data.
We found this GIS application ( https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=9fca46a9537b402295d8ea8cb3d23bc3&extent=-9376000.1688,4829183.2874,-9368772.0923,4833473.3156,102100) which has historic aerials of our surrounding county. Using our skills of building silhouette matching, we found the downtown churches in 1949 and compared them against their 2016 state.
Below are the churches and the story that is told by the shifting residential communities around them. The churches are highlighted for easy viewing. I would be interested to see the trends in other cities with historic churches, and if their stories seem similar.
Emmanuel Catholic Church. You can see the destruction of the community to its south that was wrought by the creation of I-35. With the lower half of the community destroyed, the eventual move out of the upper half allowed for the land to be turned into a new Catholic school.
Holy Trinity. The remaining neighborhood to the south-west is called the Oregon District. It has now become a hip, young singles district with few people living there attending the parish. Interesting to see the encroachment of the industrial facilities to the parish's north.
St. Joseph's. This parish is interesting b/c it was not built around its own residencies. This is because the Italian community at HT got large enough that it formed its own parish! It was aptly named St. Joseph's as the Italians always sat on the side of his side-altar in HT.
Sacred Heart. The saddest parish in this list, its community to the east was entirely destroyed by the creation of I-75. It now proudly serves the small Vietnamese Catholic community in Dayton, though many Dayton Catholics forget about it and its mission.
Reflection: I have not shown you the proximity of these parishes to one another. These 4 parishes are all within 2.28 square KM of one another. With vastly few parishioners living in the same regions that their initial communities were in, parish sustainability is a big threat.
Besides the intergenerational losses of faith due to modernism and liberalism, the destruction of downtown catholic communities and the shared life that they provided must be factored into the struggles of the church today.
Try as we might though, the solution cannot be to reconstruct these communities (in a real sense, it is logistically impossible), but to choose to enter into intentional communities with Catholics in our midst! @Tim_Wainwright made the heroic move by MOVING to make this happen.
The inconvenience of a shared life helps bring forth the virtues and helps us better serve, love, and be loved by God. @tradtom @brandonmcg @Tim_Wainwright (again) can all share these insights in some way.
My reflections are complete. Come Holy Spirit!
End thread.
My reflections are complete. Come Holy Spirit!
End thread.
@HoneyTongueMuse You may like this, though none of these parishes fall within your pastoral region.
